


its complicated

by amy_anonymous



Category: Now You See Me (Movies)
Genre: Angst, BAMF Danny, BAMF Henley, Dannys a snarky lil shit, F/M, Fluff, Kidnapping, M/M, bamf everyone really, dannys family is messed up, idek
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-09-01 02:32:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8603743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amy_anonymous/pseuds/amy_anonymous
Summary: An insite to the complicated life of J Daniel Atlas (more chapters to come





	1. prologue

 

James had always been an outcast in the Atlas house hold, for one, his brother's and sisters had been wanted by his parents, unlike him.

James was always a disappointment when it came to talent too, Samantha had her good grades, top in all her classes, Jess, James' twin, the one that his parents had  wanted, was amazing on the violin, piano and guitar, even from a young age, Ben was a jock, captain of the football team three years running, and Riley was a computer wiz, he could hack into just about anything by the age of ten, and then there was James, little James Daniel Atlas, who liked magic.

At all the family get-togethers, thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Samantha would wow everyone with her latest amazing grades, Jess would move everyone with her latest composition, Ben would impress their uncle's and cousin's with his latest win in the football pitch, Riley would show off the new game he made on the computer, and James would sit in the corner, shuffling his trusty deak of cards.

Relatives would look at him and whisper, try to console his parents, ("you did so well with the other four, you were bound to have one failure") they thought that James didn't hear them, he did.

The black sheep of the family, that's how they described him, the one who got away, his parents had tried to disuade him from the magic, tried to set him on a more accademic course, it hadn't worked.

At first his siblings accepted the magic, enjoyed it even, but as time went on, as they got older they began to loose interest, they sneered at it, called it stupid, Jess stood by him the longest, but afew weeks into year seven she snapped "James, you need to stop with the magic, its for children, you need to do something real" she had told him, but for James, it was real, it was what he wanted to do, his parents had laughed at him for that

("Magic isn't a job, its a hobby, please, just try to be more like your siblings") at first they had been gentle with him, requesting that he stop, that he do something else, but as he got older, they got more impatient, it was exactly twenty-four days after his and Jess' tenth birthday that his father snapped.

They had another fight about magic when it happened, one minute James was yelling at his father, the next he was beeing slapped across the face, he stared at his father, expecting an emidiate apology, in stead his father sneered at him, "Magic is for children, its time for you to grow up"

But James didn't give up, he didn't grow up, he continued with magic, swearing to himself that he would make a job out of it, just to spite his family, however as the magic continued, so did the abuse, it was mainly his father, his mother would just sit and watch, chipping in hear and there, Ben would join the party some nights, when he discovered what was going on.

Then Ben started smoking, that lead to about a dozen cigarette burns, most were on his back, however there was one, one which Ben was rather proud of, that he acquired when he was fourteen, just above his wrist, a circular burn, that would still be extremely visible over fifty years later, James never wore anything that showed above his wrists again.

At seventeen James left home, despite being the younger child in the Atlas family, he was the first to move out, he became a street magision, like all the greats started out, simple tricks, but he always gathered a crowd, and every night he had enough money to stay the night in some crappy little motel and to have breakfast the next morning, by the time he was eighteen he had scrimped and saved enough to buy a small appartment in Chicago, and he started going by his middle name, Daniel, severing any ties he had to his family

Just before his nineteenth birthday, he was offered a professional gig, he did magic in small arenas, university's, with an assistant called Rebecca Liate, but Rebecca wasn't fun, she was bland, she was boring, then Henley came along, she was fun and she was flirty and the audience loved her, everything was great for five months, untill the trap door incident, causing Henley to leave and start a solo act, and causing Daniel to realise that he performed better alone, or at least with out an assistant.

So he went back to his roots, street magic, untill he had just turned twenty, a tarot card arrived, with a date, time and place on it, the lover, and the four horsemen were born.


	2. Prologue ll

There was one thing that James had in his life that made it barable, well four things depending on the way you looked at it, his friends. James didn't really fit in any ware, school was no exemption from this, however there were a small group of people, however, who somehow seemed to understand him.

Of course there was Henley, the firey red-head, whom he had known for as long as he could remember, she lived in the house attached to the Atlas family's and the two shared a bedroom wall, on any night one of them couldn't sleep, or if James had had a partucularly bad beating from his father Henley could always be counted on to climb out of her bedroom window and into James' room to keep the two of them entertained. She would always insist on dragging James to the hospital after a beating, James would argue every time, but the older girl would always win in the end, the excuses for his injuries getting more ridiculous each time, and putting him on a first-name basis with every doctor at the surgery. 

The person James had known for almost as long a Henley was Ali, probably the most popular out of the group on account of him playing football, they had met on the first day of primary school and the two boys had been inseparable since, Ali was one of the only people who knew about James' home situation, leading to many nights of James staying at Ali's in order to avoid his parents.

The only other person, outside of the Atlas family, who knew about James' parents was Baylee, a short Asian girl with an even shorter temper. The girl never got violent (aside from the time she had threatened to cut Bens balls of with a pencil sharpener) but she had quickly developed a pure, undying hatred for James' family, to the extent that James' father had banned the girl from the house, following what was possibly the most disastrous visit to a friends house in the history of visits to a friends houses. The girl had left gladly, pulling a confused James out of the house with her as she left, and for once, the beating James had gotten after it was a tiny, just a little but worth it.

There were, of course, people who James haddnt told about the Atlas family, such as Pixie, obviously this wasn't the girls real name ("but I'll be damned if I walk around this school going by the name 'Elizabeta-Rose'") she had earned the name from her striking resemblence to her namesake, due to her being an albino with pale skin, hair and eyes bluer than James had previously thought possible, combined with long limbs and an exiteable attitude, Pixie really was like, well a Pixie. It wasn't that James didn't trust her enough to come clean about his home life, but the girl was so full of happiness and life, James didn't want to ruin that for her by bringing down the cold hard reality of what was happening down on her. However the girl was smarter than James gave her credit for, he would sometimes catch her sending sad smiles his way across classrooms after coming to school with a badly (no offense to Henley makeup skills) covered up black eye or his arm in a sling, or sending death glares toward his parents when she saw them. It had always remained unspoken, but Pixie knew about his parents.

The five of them had always been outcasts at school, true, Ali played football, but due to his choice of friends all the popularity that really brought him was a girlfriend once in a while and would usually keep bullies of their backs, (Ali often claimed that the only reason he stayed on the team was to give Ben a tough time as captain.) But they had always had each other, as corny and sickening as it sounded, it was true, the five of them would spend every second of free time together, usually in the too small tree house in Pixies garden or a large, empty field behind Baylee's garden. The group did, however tend to avoid James and Henleys houses, with the exemption of the occasional dinner at Henleys, James' family was avoided at all costs.

Thanks to James' skill for slight of hand he had become extremely skilled at its-not-stealing-its-borrowing, leading to multiple nights of underage drinking laughing at nothing and hiding/running away from cops on the few occasions they were spotted, James had once had the pleasure of being sober around his drunk friends.

He quickly learned that Pixie was a chill drunk, she would usually just lie back on the grass giggling slightly, she sort of resembled a high person, in contrast Ali and Baylee  were hyper drunks, they would run around, yell things into the darkness that made little to no sense,  and on one memorable occasion Baylee had gotten stuck up a tree. Henley was a tired drunk, she would usually only manage around three drinks tops before conking out compleat,  as she got older she managed to hold her own a lot better, and showed her side as a happy-girl drunk, laughing hysterically at nothing in particular and getting overly friendly with almost everyone. James had also been informed by Henley that he was a relaxed drunk, he would do pretty much anything he was told and would answer any question with compleat honesty, much to his horror.

At some point in the friendship James aquired the nickname Jem, he wasn't sure about it at first, but it did make a nice change from the name his parents and siblings were always yelling at him with. Eventually Jem wasn't a nickname anymore, it was just what he was called, and though he would never admit it, he liked it, it was a way of separating himself at home and himself when he was with the other four, he wasn't scared little James the unwanted freak when he was with them, he was just Jem, their friend.

Jem was fifteen when he had his first kiss, it was actually with Pixie, it probably wasn't for the reasons most first kisses were, it was really to friends helping each other out, Pixie was fairly sure that she wasn't into girls, but she wasn't into guys either, and Jem was having a slight gay crisis, he knew he liked girls, he had a crush on Henley years ago, a thought that made him cringe now as she was like a sister to him, but he also found himself atracted to guys, eventually the two decided that they would kiss, just to see if they were atracted to each other, or even enjoyed kissing each other. In the end Pixie determined that she was asexual, and Jem that he was pansexual a few hears later, and vowed not to tell a soul that it had happened. 

Eventually Jem became more acustemed to Pixie, Baylee, Ali and Henley being around than he was for his own so called family, whenever people would bring up his siblings he would sling his arm around which ever member of the group was closest to him at the time, and eventually people stopped referring to the Atlas household as Jems family.

Jem was fairly sure that his sibling were perfectly happy with this, the four of them had made it clear a long time ago that Jem was no longer considered a part of their family.

The only Atlas family member who seemed not to hate Jem quite as much as everyone else was Jems twin sister, Jess, though Jem was fairly sure people called her Jessie now, she was usually civil with him, which was more than could be said for the others, to be fair she had to be civil with him due to being in the same class at school and the fact that they had the same last name ment that they were made to sit together in most lessons. Luckily for Jem when this happened the also sat with Baylee due to her last name, Akura.

The only problem with his family really arose at home, it was very common for Jem to skip lots of meals, he would ocationaly grab a piece of toast and a cup of coffee for breakfast when no one else was around, Alis mum would make him a packed lunch after Jem had acidentaly slipped the fact that he never had lunch a school in to conversation when he had dinner at Alis house, his mother had been horrified at this, and even more so when he had admitted that that was his first solid meal in three days, from then on Mrs Denver had made him lunch every day. He would also only ever have dinner if he was invited over to one of his friends house, on acount of his mum never bothering to make him anything, these combined forces had caused Jem to become very good at functioning on very little food.

Eventually his friends all went their separate ways, Baylee going to Art college, Ali moved to LA to start a music career, Pixie got accepted to Yale, Henley and Jem stuck together both getting into Brown , shocking his parents and siblings to no end, his parents had never bothered to look at his report card or go to any of his parents nights, he was barley ever home anyway so why would they have noticed that he had swim practice on Tuesdays after school and helped with the yearbook every year as apparently not-irritating-helping Baylee as she took the photos and making snide comments about people's quotes counted as helping with the yearbook. 

When the two of them arived at the college was when Jem began going by Daniel, it had taken Henley forever to get used to the new name, it she eventually managed it by coming up with another nick name, Danny. 'Danny' was fine with this, whatever ment she got the right name, though when she was sleepy, drunk or worse she would slip back into old habits and call him Jem, he pretended to hate it, but he did admittedly, maybe, just a little bit, like it.

Danny and Henley dated for a while in college but both agreed that it was weird, they knew each other to well and for to long, they were more like siblings than romantic partners, the break up had, however, baffled everyone else, ("but you act like an old married couple") 

Eventually Danny had a law degree and Henley had an economics degree, despite this they had been in agreement that they still wanted to persue their love for magic, they had solid education so if magic left them totally broke they would have things to fall back on.

They stayed performing together until the infamous 'trap door incident' Danny had known that Henley would hate him for it and that she would leave him for it, but he said it anyway, later he realised that he had been pushing her away on purpose , Henley had been the last remnants of a life he wanted to forget, she would forever see him as Jem, the kid who she dragged to hospital on an almost weekly basis because of his parents, without Henley he was free to be J Daniel Atlas, the emotionless control freak without a past.

Of course he and Henley had met again when the four horsemen formed, but rather than beong angry or disappointed, Daniel found he was actually pleased that the red head was there, though he would never admit it to her he had missed her, he missed all of his old misfit family.

Eventually he opened back up to Henley about everything, and they became as close as ever, and then Henley left, sure he liked Jack and Dylan, Lula wasn't completely intolerable and even Merritt had his moments, but on nights that he would wake up drenched in sweat from a nightmare he wished that the escape artist had been there to sit with him like she did when they were kids.

Then Macau happened, Danny felt physically sick with regret, maybe he was just an egotistical brat who didn't deserve love, just like his father had said, but the others had been there to reassure him, he never voiced his worries but he didn't need to, they didn't need to say anything either, actions spoke louder than words, Jack would still pester him to teach him new card tricks from his old street shows that Jack had loved, Merritt teased him about pretty much everything, but he would also drop of food in Dannys room when he was to engrossed in a progect to remember to eat, Lula had insisted on teaching Danny a thing or two about knots, ("because gods you need help") and Dylan, well Danny wasn't sure what exactly he and Dylan were but it was good what ever it was, he was fairly sure he was in love with the older man, and was still holding out hope that Dylan felt the same.

All this caused Danny to realise that maybe he didn't have his old family but he had a new one, and his new one was pretty good.


End file.
